


Something Precious

by spectralarchers



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood, Blood and Injury, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, One Shot, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Sacrifice, Tumblr Prompt, coughing up blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:41:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24240739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectralarchers/pseuds/spectralarchers
Summary: When Clint Barton asks Wanda Maximoff for help to bring back someone from the dead, it doesn't go like he planned. Or she, for that matter.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 18





	Something Precious

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Afarie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Afarie/gifts).



> This was a tumblr prompt: 
> 
> « “You’re never going to be the same after this", with Clint and Wanda » 
> 
> I took the prompt and I ran with it.

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

Clint is nervous. That doesn’t happen very often, as Clint is usually the one who’s confident about everything. Even though, in this situation, he can feel his nerves. 

He’s not feeling too well either.

Wanda simply looks at him from where she’s sitting, and gives him one of the saddest smiles he’s ever seen. He knows what her powers can do, and she knows it too. The one thing though, is that neither of them are exactly sure what the consequences of what she’s about to do to him will be.

She’s never tried it before. She remembers discussing it with Ultron and with Vision, and in the dark dungeons of Sokovia, Baron Strucker had tried to get her to do it as well, but she’s light years away from the scared girl she was in Sokovia when she got her powers.

In the Soul World, she’d met with Stephen Strange, and they’d discussed the powers of the mystic arts. About the Dark Dimension, and about Kaecillius. About the Infinity Stones.

When they’d been brought back by Bruce using the Infinity Stones, when they’d fought Thanos, she’d realized now more than ever that her powers would be all dominating if she were allowed to let loose.

So, when Clint had come to ask her for this, she’d said yes. Nobody knew about it, nobody even dared think about the consequences of what she was about to do for Clint, but he’d asked her. And she’d said yes. Because she knew the pain of losing a loved one, and she owed it to him. In a way, Clint had been the reason why she had come to the right side, to SHIELD’s side after Ultron’s powergrab.

“It’ll work,” she mutters, as Clint sits down on the floor in front of her. She has never opened a book about the mystic arts, and she frankly isn’t sure about how to do this. She knows the Soul Stone, because they were in the Soul World when they weren’t on Earth. She knows how to channel it. Or so she hopes.

“Then do it,” Clint says, sounding almost out of breath as he says it.

“You’re never going to be the same after this,” she warns him, and he nods. It doesn’t matter.

Wanda nods as well, and with a flick of her wrists, she channels her powers, opening up a rift in the room, pulling every atom apart with her mind, every sensation of time, every reality, everything she can touch, and when she finally feels like she’s got the right place, she opens her eyes and looks at Clint.

He smiles, although weakly.

As she sends him across space and time, ripping through every rule of reality with her powers, she hopes that she will keep him safe. She knows that Laura will never forgive her for this, but Clint had asked her for her help.

To get Natasha back. 

Whatever it took.

So, through space and time and universes, he travels until she can feel something opening, a rift, open only to Clint, and she can’t see him after he passes through it. Her hands burn with the effort, as her mind starts to crumble, a splitting headache almost forcing her to scream, but she has to keep quiet. They haven’t told anyone about this.

She almost faints when light explodes in the room and two bodies fly out of the ball of light, landing across the floor, denting the walls as they do. With a deep breath, fighting to regain control of what she’s opened, she manages to close the rift, watching over what has come through.

There’s two bodies, and she can sense that at least one of them is Clint’s. She can feel his mind in hers, his memories, but something feels wrong. Something feels terribly wrong, and it worries her that he’s not responding. 

The explosion woke the people around her in the building, and soon enough, both Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson are rushing through to see what’s going on. Their eyes go to the bodies on the floor, at the marks on the wall, and when they both ask “What the hell happened?” someone coughs.

It’s not a good sounding cough, and it takes Wanda a second to realize that Clint has regained consciousness and that he’s coughing up blood. Next to him, Natasha’s body jerks awake in a shock, and she immediately turns around to get her bearings.

“What’s going on?” Natasha asks, panicked, as she realizes that Clint is twitching in pain next to her, blood pouring out of his mouth as he heaves for breath. It’s like he can’t get any air in as long as blood is pooling around him. Bucky and Sam rush to Clint’s body, turning him onto his side so he doesn’t choke on the blood that’s seeping through his lungs at inhuman speed, while Natasha cradles her head against her knees. 

Something’s wrong. Natasha is feeling perky and well, but Clint isn’t. Wanda can feel things happening inside his head, but she can’t express them. 

“Wanda, what did you do?” Sam asks, as they try to figure out a way to get Clint to breathe, Bucky having put a knife’s handle in between Clint’s teeth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. 

“I don’t know,” Wanda whispers, her hand clutched to her face, “I don’t know!” she then screams, her red magic extending all over her body. 

Clint jerks on the ground at the energy, and Wanda knows that he’s broken. Something must have gone wrong. “Something must have gone wrong!”

“The Skull,” Natasha says, as she looks like she’s about to faint, looking too weak, “He said a soul for a soul,” as if that would explain everything. “Wanda, did he tell you how I died on Vormir?” Natasha asks, panicked, and Wanda shakes her head.

“He wouldn’t show me, he wouldn’t tell me!” she exclaims, as Clint coughs, spitting out the handle of the knife he’s been given to bite down on. Soon enough, more things are beginning to happen around them, as Wanda feels Clint’s mind splitting. He’d told her that Natasha had died defending herself. That he hadn’t managed to save her from Vormir. He’d just mentioned the Red Skull, and Wanda had filled out the gaps herself… She’d thought… She’d thought maybe she could bring them back.

“I don’t know,” Wanda whispers again, as Sam presses his fingers into Clint’s mouth to pull out his tongue from the back of his throat. Wanda flicks her wrists, and Clint goes to sleep almost immediately, the coagulating blood on his face and in his mouth stopping momentarily.

“He’s barely existing in this plane of reality anymore,” Natasha says, like she knows exactly what she’s talking about. “You can’t rip a life from the Soul Stone like this and not expect it to fight back.”

* * *

Some SHIELD medics get to the room and transport Clint to the medical bay. His vitals signs are crashing, albeit slower because of the sleep Wanda put him on, but they’re crashing still. 

She shouldn’t have done this. She shouldn’t have. The thought of Laura and the others having to hear that Clint passed - she would never forgive herself.

* * *

A couple of hours pass by, and as she’s sitting, fully awake, in one of the waiting rooms adjacent to the room they’ve stabilized Clint in, a portal opens and Stephen Strange steps through, looking straight at Wanda. She knows he’s mad by the way he’s looking at her.

“You don’t mess with space and time, Wanda,” he says, but he isn’t completely mad. “I can stop him from dying, but-”

“He won’t be the same after this,” she finishes, interrupting him. Strange nods. “What will happen to him?”

“I don’t know.”

Having Stephen Strange say I don’t know is like getting hit in the stomach by a thousand punches. 

She knew Clint would be in bad shape but… not like this.

Not like this.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry if you're expecting more, because there isn't, this was simply filling out a prompt for Afarie, because they wanted something *dark* out of the prompt. When I asked if it should be dark or dark dark, they said dark dark. So really, blame Afarie for it.
> 
> As always, find me on tumblr at [spectralarchers](https://spectralarchers.tumblr.com) ♥


End file.
